The old creek would flood into the shallow bottom 

& freeze into tender spidering legs of ice & snow
for a time, trapping the flow. For years, we’d danced on it 
in our sock bottoms–my sister a little fairy on the ice–
until the year it began to break underfoot, and, yelping,
we felt the snap & ache of cold water in our shoes.
 
Somehow we marched out way through the ice swamp,
and shivering, knew the direction to the road 
where our grandparents would arrive
as if by prayer, back from town
in the little red truck to save us, 
them always surveilling the treeline
for our little bodies, our lips turning blue 
in the January morning.
 
They toweled us dry that Saturday, sent us home
where that brittle cold became a silence 
between all four of us.
First that and then over time–
it grew between them and us,
who could not yet tame our wildest urges.

We know they saw us that day
at least: the way we looked
at once so small, then bigger–bigger–
as we stepped from the ditch 
and into unknowable teenhood.